I’ve been a member of the Kiva Community Lending Platform since 2012. Kiva is an initiative where you do not expect returns in return for your invested money, but helps people in disadvantaged areas such as Africa, the Middle East, Kosovo and Ukraine. In these areas it is typically difficult to lend money, especially knowing the complexity of lending process, it’s almost impossible. Since I did not have any negative experiences since 2012 with Kiva, my money has been rotated several times, exactly 4 times. I helped people who want to learn, start a business, farmers, house renovators, and others. I have taken part in 65 loans so far, which I personally are very proud of.
Recently, thanks to this good experience, and I saw that P2P lending is getting more popular, I thought it was time for me to try it out. After a lot of searching, I came to the conclusion that most of them are not available for everybody. Finally, I decided to try the Finnish Fixura provider, which only lends to Finns. First, I have transferred €500, then €1000 to my account. Unfortunately, Fixura does not allow you to get details of the borrower or to get any information about a loan, you can invest only via the an automatic lending, the algorithm makes the decision, which loan it should invest. You can only set only how much of the capital you want to allocate on a scale of 5 credit ratings.
Well, since March, I had to wait until this month for the interest earned to reach the fees paid to the service provider. The interest rate is between 6(10) -27%, in Euro. I was very skeptical at the about who is willing to pay that rate and why those people are not going to the banks and ask for loan with a lower interest rate. All Hungarian banks offer loans with much lower rates. My current portfolio:
